The disposal of human remains after death is currently done by either burial or cremation. Due to a lack of suitable and accessible land and the high costs involved, cremation is becoming preferable to burial. However, cremation causes harmful emissions in the form of dioxins and mercury. Mercury is a big problem and in Europe, there is legislation pending to force crematoria to filter abate their emissions. This is expensive and also requires very bulky equipment that takes up a lot of room.
A further problem with cremation is that it uses a lot of gas, and produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, which contributes to global warming. A further disadvantage of cremation is the organic building blocks that make up the body and come from the ecosystem are lost forever during the burning process.
Some problems with known alkaline hydrolysis methods used for disposal of regulated waste in hospitals, are that the alkaline hydrolysis unit needs to be heated up for each load of waste, and then cooled down, so that the waste fluids produced are cool enough to be received by the local sewer system. This uses a lot of energy, and causes long time intervals between the disposal of successive waste loads. The energy used in heating and cooling is typically wasted, which contributes to global warming.
When disposing of regulated waste in hospitals, it is known to recalculate fluids within a decomposition unit by means of a recirculation pump. The hotter the operating temperature of the decomposition unit, the faster and more efficiently the decomposition unit can operate. However, in the known processes, the maximum operating temperature of the decomposition unit is limited by the maximum operating temperature that the recirculation pump can tolerate. This is typically only up to 155 degrees Celsius.